


You, Me, and the Monsters Inside Us

by robotboy



Series: A Vine Around A Ruin [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, Body Modification, Codependency, Cyborg Cassian Andor, Cyborgs, Deaf Character, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Posthuman, Robot Sex, Robot Tentacle Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Shared Consciousness, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Surgery recovery, Symbiotic Relationship, Tentacles, deaf fic from a deaf author, graphic depictions of cyberspace, inappropriate use of dataspikes, it's not star wars until everyone loses an arm, you'd be amazed which of these tags are already wrangled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:33:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 14,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28238511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy
Summary: After Scarif, Bodhi chooses the Rebellion and Cassian chooses K-2SO. When they meet again, they’re not the same people they used to be.
Relationships: Bor Gullet/Bodhi Rook, Cassian Andor/K-2SO, Cassian Andor/K-2SO/Bodhi Rook
Series: A Vine Around A Ruin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2068569
Comments: 60
Kudos: 23





	1. Whisper

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Interface Integration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18914560) by [theLoyalRoyalGuard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLoyalRoyalGuard/pseuds/theLoyalRoyalGuard). 
  * Inspired by [Reach](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27735787) by [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen). 



> This is a prequel to [Cargo, but reading Cargo first might help this make sense.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20997242/chapters/49933700)
> 
> Beta read by blxcksqvadron and Bright_Elen. 
> 
> Credits: NIM comes from Bright_Elen’s Reach; Cassian with a dataport was inspired by theLoyalRoyalGuard's Interface Integration; Bodhi getting a KX arm originated in shima-spoon’s brilliant artwork. I’m also recycling some material [cough] _developing on themes_ from my own fics: cyborg horror from Highwater, Cassian’s post-Scarif characterisation in Villains of Circumstance, and the OT3 dynamic from 1 Rogue Street.
> 
> Art by blxcksqvadron: 

Do you remember this part, Bodhi Rook?

Let me help you.

It happens in the quiet places, in the middle, where you always get lost. A twinge in your mechanical arm, a glitch in the network.

You find him. No, you find _them_.

So many things about this statement are untrue, but as lies, they’re useful. At first it was just a signal, early in your Rebellion days. You’d been firm about keeping your role as a cargo pilot, though you’d agreed to pass along intel you picked up along the way. You perfected the art of pulling still in hyperlanes, playing the comms like an instrument to track the whispering frequencies. You have a knack for getting under the surface and finding the truth among the fragments—where do you think you learned that trick?

There’s one whisper that comes and goes over the years. It feeds you little secrets, vital intelligence. You’d figured at first it was a deep agent, but as your clearance got higher in post-Rebellion intelligence, you didn’t find their file. Then you thought: maybe a sympathiser, someone too deep in their own world to send you anything but rumours. Neither of these things were entirely untrue.

You will only understand this in hindsight, but once you know it will feel like you always knew:

Cassian Andor is alive.


	2. It's Blue From The Outside

Consciousness found Cassian unwilling, and wet. His scream caught in the tube strapped to his mouth, and his instincts told him he was drowning before he could understand why he wasn’t. All he could see was bright blue, and his limbs dragged through cold sluggish fluid until he smacked against a wall of transparisteel that curved around him.

He’d taken a lot of bad missions, but never anything to get him in the bacta tank.

Not that he could see it, but a metal palm pressed to the outside of the tank, mirroring his. It could have been what lulled him back under, or it could have been the sharp and scathing voice demanding his sedatives be upped.

Cassian always dreamt in blue after that, a spectrum between the slick glow of bacta and the flickering shimmer of a holo.

*

Bodhi Rook’s survival didn’t merit the bacta tank, though his injuries looked far worse than Cassian’s. He wasn’t a captain, and he’d been an Imp the week before. With Kay fussing over Cassian, Cassian was the one left to fuss over Bodhi—and if he hadn’t, Bodhi might not have lived. Cassian had an eye for ex-Imperials who became invaluable to the Rebellion (when he tells you this, a decade from now, he crackles with static at the irony).

The Death Star had burned the flesh off Cassian’s back, but it had burned the life out of Jyn Erso. He’d known it before he was told, but when he was, he’d thrown a datapad at the wall—and missed, because the muscles in his shoulder were still knitting themselves around his durasteel ribs.

(The anger, like the metal, started in his bones.)

Draven made a decision that moment, but Cassian was still drowning-but-breathing, in grief as he had in bacta.

‘At least do something for the pilot,’ Cassian snarled. ‘He can’t fly without an arm.’

‘Prostheses are hard to come by,’ Draven shook his head. ‘It’ll have to wait.’

‘No,’ Kay had spoken for him. Since Scarif, he was never more than a metre from Cassian’s side. ‘It won’t.’

Cassian was surprised, but he didn’t ask if Kay was sure. When they were alone, Kay had shrugged. An old gesture in a new hull.

‘I was barely used to this model anyway,’ he said. ‘I’ll adjust better than a human would.’

Cassian made this backup of Kay after Eadu, and he’d kept the hull of this K2 model hidden in storage and obscured with enough red tape to make Draven raise an eyebrow. Cassian had to remind himself that for the all the events Kay missed on Scarif, Kay had the advantage of hours spent talking with Bodhi while Cassian was stuck in the tank. They were close, insofar as anyone could get close to the shattered pilot with glazed eyes.

(You understand backup copies. A self left behind, stored safely in another body. It helps to think about it that way, in those early days, as you learn how to slip through its tentacled grasp and feed it when it hungers.)

‘He’s not unlike a sliced droid,’ Kay explained. ‘Except I can’t defrag him.’

Kay had also missed Cassian screaming for him, promising him that they could make it to the tower. Kay was dead by the time Syndulla’s ship had scooped Cassian out of Jyn’s lifeless arms on that beach, and if he hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have stopped for him anyway.

Cassian didn’t tell him about it, but Kay would know.

So Kay threatened to slice the medical droids until they agreed to the procedure, and Bodhi wound up with a piece of Kay attached at the shoulder.

(He did more than threaten, but Cassian wouldn’t know this. Cassian hadn’t regained consciousness the first time Kay had shoved his dataspike into a medical droid and rewritten Cassian’s treatment plan. You watched, and you nodded, and you barely knew your own name, let alone the truth that this sealed a covenant which would eventually save your life.

Kay hated slicing other droids, but he always did it for Cassian.)

‘I like it,’ Bodhi mumbled, manipulating the hinged fingers. ‘It can’t—it can’t understand this.’

‘Oil the joints,’ Kay couldn’t conceal the affection in his voice.

His remaining hand had tightened where it rested on Cassian’s lower back. It often found its way there, checking Cassian was healing properly. There was an arcing incision along his hip, avoiding the twisting silvery burns, where they’d replaced the smashed pelvis with more durasteel. He’d also lost a piece of his liver, punctured by a stray rib: apparently he’d never drink alcohol again, and there was probably a note on his psych profile (there were a great many, at this point) at how little he’d cared. Cassian was never found wanting for ways to abuse himself.

This was what earned Cassian time in the tank, while Bodhi had lost two limbs, a lot of skin, and his mind.

Like Cassian didn’t talk about Scarif, Kay didn’t talk about how his touch was never far from Cassian’s skin, checking him far more often than the medical droids did.


	3. Puzzle

You barely remember those early days. (Not without my help). Sometimes you convince yourself you were the only survivor of Rogue One: by the time Hoth was evacuated, that was true.

Look up the records. The creature is much better at this trick: laying out the memories in order, changing the context, letting you twist the pieces left out of the record and slot in your own jumbled recollections.

You believed they died on a mission. A testament to their skill, that they fooled everyone they needed to fool. Mourning them was swept up in mourning everyone: what were those weeks in medical, learning Cassian’s soft parts and hard edges, watching Kay give up all he could because he couldn’t be complete if Cassian wasn’t? You lose them all in the end anyway.

Only—it bothers you. It bothers the creature too, because it can smell lies and it tears them apart with a thousand lithe little fingers.

‘How did you hear the droid, if the grenade deafened you?’ it asks in Galen’s voice.

‘He’d use a readout,’ you show him the memory, a datapad animated with expressive aurebesh. Kay fed you a silent commentary as he argued with everyone in medical; as you sat too petrified to sleep; as Cassian floated like a pickled marionette. You’d installed the transcription software on all your freighters since, and when you learned how to fly again, it was with his hand.

There’s something about that sardonic intonation. A tune you barely remember. That’s what tugs on your memory as you monitor that frequency in the hyperlanes.

K-2SO used to talk like that, you think.


	4. It's All Fun And Games Until

‘We can make a place for you,’ Draven promised. ‘But the droid is becoming a problem.’

Cassian made the choice then. The plan, he made ten minutes later.

*

‘What are the odds of this working?’

A pause. ‘Alive and undetected?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thirty per cent.’

Cassian hissed through his teeth. He’d proceeded with worse odds before, but not with everything on the line.

‘Is there a better strategy?’

‘Yes,’ Kay repeated, his patience thin. ‘You report me as destroyed, and go back to the Rebellion.’

‘If they’re burning you, they’ll burn me eventually,’ Cassian scowled.

‘That’s only fifteen-percent—‘

‘What’s the five-year projection on you making it without me?’ Cassian interrupted.

Kay’s processors buzzed. They did that when he was going to lie to Cassian. ‘It’s possible.’

 _‘Possible,’_ Cassian drawled. ‘And if I come with you?’

‘Taking for granted the slim chance that we survive the initial escape?’

‘Taking that for granted, yes.’

‘… more possible.’

Humans never listened to numbers. Words, occasionally: Kay had learned this.

‘So thirty per cent is our best shot?’ Cassian’s knuckles traced the shape of his moustache.

(Kay wondered, from this point, if Cassian was in love with him.)

‘Strategically?’ Kay sighed, or did a very close impression of a sigh. ‘Yes.’

‘Then that’s what we do,’ Cassian lay his palm on Kay’s chassis.

‘I’m really looking forward to when I don’t have to take your orders,’ Kay glared at Cassian’s hand. ‘In the likely event that you die, I want you to know that.’

*

It didn’t go according to plan, but they hadn’t planned for it to go according to plan. Cassian fell from the catwalk twenty metres north and three minutes before the designated point. Kay swooped the speeder as close to the acid as he could, dipping the nose to catch Cassian.

Cassian was a crumpled heap, slipping helplessly toward the speeder’s edge. Kay flung a hand forward to grab him by the collar. It would be reckless to call Cassian’s name, with the rest of the Rebel team still fighting above the haze. Kay tossed Cassian into the passenger seat. He focused on steering the speeder out of the volatile sea before it corroded the engines—then they really _would_ be dead. Navigating took enough of Kay’s processing power to preclude analysis of Cassian’s outcomes: the unconsciousness; the cause of the fall; the impact; the toxic fumes; the shattered filtration mask; the blood all over his face. A thirty percent chance would have to do.

He reached with one hand, the other tight on the yoke, and found the weak pulse in Cassian’s wrist.

(Kay wondered, from this point, if he was in love with Cassian.)

‘If you’re taking my orders now…’ he murmured, as he hauled the yoke toward a settlement that lay past the horizon. ‘Please don’t hate me for this.’

*

Blue dreams shrunk into black. In the bacta tank, nothing had hurt. He’d hated it. This time, pain cleaved through his skull like he was a year overdue for caf, and his scalp tickled so badly he flinched, trying to shake off imaginary insects.

‘Kay?!’ he rasped.

‘I’m here,’ came the answer, somewhere to his left. He swung his face towards it, hunting for the glow of Kay’s optics.

‘I can’t—’

‘See, no,’ Kay told him. ‘That’s temporary, but it’s necessary.’

Cassian’s heart punched him in the throat. He twisted his wrists against the restraints that bound him to a bed, tilted like a med bay. He couldn’t keep the thread of panic from his voice. _‘… Kay?’_

’Tell me your name,’ Kay said.

‘Cassian Jeron Andor,’ he answered, and continued without needing Kay’s standard concussion questions: ‘We were on Kalee. It was Primeday, second month in the standard calendar.’

That was useful intel. If this was a psyop, he was selling out the Rebellion.

Fuck the Rebellion: this was _Kay._

‘Good,’ Kay moved closer, the whir of his joints suggesting he was right beside Cassian. ‘It’s been six weeks.’

‘Six _weeks?’_ Cassian repeated, and pulled on the restraints again. Now he could make sense of the drip in his arm, the different clothes, and the wretched, maddening itch at the back of his neck. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘There was some kind of impact that sent you off the platform,’ Kay said. ‘And the surgeons here mostly work on—‘

_‘Kay—‘_

‘You lost an eye.’

Cassian’s breath stopped short. He blinked, and the headache changed shape as he made sense of it, a cold hard weight in his skull that his lashes slid too-smoothly around. He gritted his teeth through a surge of bile, and blinked again. It made sinuses lurch.

‘But I got you a new one,’ Kay added.

‘You…’ Cassian swallowed, and tried again. ‘You got me a new eye.’

‘It’s a prototype,’ Kay said. ‘If we give them your integration data, they’ll forego the costs.’

Cassian fought his breathing into submission.

‘Is there anything else?’ he was shaking. He didn’t know if he could stop shaking.

‘Nothing you haven’t recovered from,’ Kay’s hand found his shoulder, and pressed until he held still. ‘But installing a sensory apparatus is… extensive. Adjusting to mechanical prostheses is one thing: cybernetics are another. There’s an eighty percent chance of traumatic dissociation, hence the restraints. Though knowing you, you’ll say the scar is dashing.’

‘I meant _you,’_ Cassian frowned, and his eyebrow stung. That would be the scar. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m perfectly fine,’ Kay said. ‘They upgraded my arm, in fact.’

(You’ll be glad to know this, since you never returned his good one.)

Kay’s thumb moved back and forth on Cassian’s chest, setting a pace for him to breathe. Cassian breathed.

The back of his head itched again.

‘What do you mean, _extensive?’_


	5. Crow's Nest

Yavin rains capriciously, chubby drops that wait until you’re crossing from the landing strip to the base to tap you on the shoulder. The shower breaks into sticky sunlight the moment you’re under cover.

Move with purpose, first though the logistics centre and then over to intelligence. Jack in your datapad and set the latest reports to download. Shuffle some information around, until the classified Kalee files end up in a folder you need to review a flagged line of inquiry. Something to peruse during your next long haul.

A new recruit in a fresh-pressed tunic is talking to your right. Ignore him for a minute. Finish the transfer and hold your datapad in the metal hand: people are always a little more reluctant to touch it.

 _Sir,_ you catch, and _security_. A posture of keen-eyed concern, eager to prove that no slouching freighter pilots will accidentally swan into intelligence and download packets of sensitive data on _his_ watch.

‘Son,’ Draven gives him a nod that would stop a more perceptive recruit in his tracks. ‘He’s got clearance.’

A conversation you won’t stick around for, no matter how amusing the disappointment: _that’s Rook?_

They never give you this shit in logistics.


	6. Eye on the Ball

The techs recommended Cassian spend a week with monocular vision: after two days, Cassian decided he was sick of it.

His stomach churned through his first meals since Kalee. He’d dealt with the scars of Scarif, but Kay had been right: the neat slash from his forehead to his cheek was jarring, interrupted by a black sphere with a pinprick of yellow at its core. It roved in harmony with his organic eye, but Kay hesitated at activating its input to his brain.

‘It’s calibrated to match the specs of a human eye,’ Kay said.

‘But calibrations aren’t practice,’ Cassian guessed. ‘That’s why they need my data.’

Kay had been generous in calling them _surgeons_. They were engineers, a couple of them organics, but the leader was a protocol droid with the strangest wetware augmentation Cassian had ever seen. The Kalee mission had been a desperate bid to find a means to sabotage the cybernetic henchman of the Emperor. The Rebel team hadn’t made it further than planetfall before two agents were lost in a defensive skirmish.

The two lost agents continued to argue.

‘So let’s get them their data.’

‘You’re not ready.’

‘What’s the worst thing that could happen? Distortion, disorientation?’

‘Cassian,’ Kay sighed. ‘It’s the activation process.’

Kay’s hesitation was a new thing, a sore point in his smooth steel surface. Cassian bristled at being treated as fragile, but neither of them could deny his missions since Eadu had shaken Kay’s complex code. Adjusting his predictive models around Cassian’s new conditions was no easy feat, as he’d made abundantly clear.

But Cassian didn’t need to ask what the activation process was. His skin and hair had regrown around the implant, but the steel disc at the base of his skull was a constant distraction. Cassian compulsively traced the outline and the surface of it. He knew the shape well. The indentations matched a standard data socket, the same kind in ships, computers, and droids. The same kind Kay had in the back of his head.

He wasn’t proud of the panic attack he’d had when he first realised what it was, but Kay had predicted it around 100 to 1.

‘I’d rather you do it,’ he said. ‘Seems a long time coming, if you think about it.’

Kay’s optics flashed. They didn’t talk often about how they met, Cassian kneeling on Kay’s prone back and jamming a dataspike into him, shattering Kay’s Imperial protocols. The time Kay spent jacked into a wall while Cassian slapped the code back together until Kay had the autonomy to finish the rest.

Six weeks on a drip didn’t compare. Kay didn’t have to say it.

‘I’ll calibrate it,’ Kay was reluctant, bordering on sullen. ‘But if anything feels wrong—‘

‘I’ll tell you,’ Cassian said.

‘No you won’t,’ Kay cocked his head. ‘I’ll _know.’_

Cassian stared at Kay’s exposed dataspike. It had never looked long, but Cassian had never had to think about its length, either. He sat forward, sweeping his hair to one side without a word.

Kay’s left hand splayed across Cassian’s skull, steadying him. Cassian tensed, and before he could say _wait_ , Kay’s grip loosened.

‘You could remain monocular,’ Kay suggested. ‘Your odds of surviving without depth perception aren’t terrible.’

‘Fuck off,’ Cassian muttered. ‘Do it.’

Kay pinned him down.

‘Close your eyes.’

He jacked in. Cassian screamed.

His entire awareness distilled into the connection, mind shoving back where his body couldn’t. He tasted steel at the back of his tongue, a spindle that twisted his thoughts around it, waiting. Kay was holding back, dormant inside him. Cassian drew a shuddering breath and focused. The presence was Kay. He knew Kay. He exhaled, and imagined letting go.

‘Good,’ Kay said, fingertips curling on Cassian’s scalp. ‘Take your time.’

Cassian opened his mouth, and it was too dry to speak.

‘You can feel me?’ Kay guessed. ‘You don’t have to move yet.’

Cassian’s pulse fluttered. His instincts railed at the intrusion, but he’d kept his instincts on a leash for years.

(You could have told him: _don’t fight it. Give it what it wants_.

 _At least yours loves you_.)

(It’s probably for the best you weren’t there.)

Cassian unclenched his hands, gasping to catch the saliva threatening to spill from his open mouth. He croaked a wordless question, and hoped Kay would understand.

‘Soon,’ Kay said. ‘The wetware interface is... unique.’

He managed a _nnh_ in response: a promise of the patience Kay had asked for.

‘You’re doing very well,’ Kay noted, and then: ‘ _Oh_.’

The next _nnh_ was a question.

‘I registered your response to my…’ Kay hesitated. ‘I felt that.’

Cassian imagined unfurling his grasp on the spike. Kay’s fingers flexed.

‘Keep doing that,’ Kay murmured. ‘That’s good.’

The heat spread in Cassian’s chest. The same moment, Kay’s processors whirred.

‘It’s—you’re—‘ Kay’s vocabulator growled. _‘We’re_ integrating.’

Once Cassian had the context, he could reach for Kay’s presence in his mind, threading himself through a needle. The faint stars behind his eyes flickered.

‘Open,’ Kay said, and Cassian obeyed.

The room was too bright. He squinted, reminding himself that was normal, and tried to soften his gaze. Afterimages chased the first movement before suddenly clearing from his left side.

‘Wait,’ he croaked, and Kay restored them.

‘Your focus is good,’ Kay said. ‘Test the depth perception.’

Cassian held up his hands. The skin was miserably pale. He touched his index fingers together, picked up the ball on the table, and tossed it from one hand to the other.

‘Parallax is strong,’ Kay reported. ‘Shape-from-shading better than projected.’

Cassian held the ball up, so Kay could run analysis. ‘It looks normal.’

‘We can test full light range and colour spectrum later,’ Kay declared. ‘I’ll leave the eye on the default settings and get your diagnostics afterward.’

‘Default settings?’ Cassian repeated.

‘The human perceptive limitations are in place,’ Kay clarified. ‘For verisimilitude.’

‘So you’ve dumbed it down,’ Cassian frowned. He was getting used to the tightness of the scar. ‘You’re saying it can do more?’

‘It’s a full ocular rig,’ Kay said. ‘Infrared, telescopic lenses, software for datavis projection, if you wanted it.’

‘So I could…’ Cassian put the ball down. It rolled toward the edge of the table. He wasn’t thinking as his hand lashed out. The impulse jerked his head forward, and for a sickening second, the spike inside him moved with it.

 _‘Cassian,’_ Kay moved with him, lurching forward. His voice was half-drowned out by Cassian’s startled sob. He couldn’t stop picturing the spike snapping, the wires that connected to his neurons yanking free and the visceral tugging of the disc coming loose. His heart kicked and his throat closed.

‘Cassian!’ Kay’ was equally scolding and dismayed. ‘Hold on, just keep—be _still.’_

Kay gripped his chin, locking his head in place. A thumb rested on Cassian’s lower lip, suppressing its tremble.

‘I’ve got you, Cassian, I have you,’ Kay’s voice was level, as Cassian’s nostrils flared compulsively. _‘I can fix this.’_

The spike wasn’t an invasion, Cassian realised, pushing back the fear that clutched at his nerves. It was a lifeline.

‘That’s it, that’s perfect,’ Kay told him. ‘You’ve got me. Just let me in.’

It was almost easy.

Light flooded through him, a cascade falling as soft as snow, soothing his racing heart and prying his lungs open: slow, easy. A decisive force corralled the spiralling panic and unraveled it.

‘You’re _inside_ me.’

(He didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t know yet that he didn’t have to.)

‘Oh, Cassian,’ Kay’s vocabulator thrummed in a tone he’d never heard. ‘It’s so—fucking— _wet.’_


	7. Chime

The dispatches never have the same signal, and seldom appear in the same parts of the galaxy. Their consistency comes from the cadence, so you couldn’t pinpoint exactly when they began. It was from there the name _Hux_ was first slipped your way, so it was a long time back.

The monster wears Galen’s face when it wants to talk.

‘You know how to find them,’ he remarks. His eyes are warm, flecked with copper so bright it’s almost red.

‘We don’t know that it _is_ them,’ you tell him.

A trickle of water slides from his hair to his throat.

‘I have a good feeling about this,’ his arms slide around you. Count them: two, for now.

It knows how things were with Galen, so that’s how things are. Nobody else gets under your skin like this, after all.

‘Are you lonely?’ he asks.

‘How can I be?’ you give him a wry smile.

A tentacle unsticks itself from your waist, suckers pulling away with a reproachful sting.

‘A few weeks spent together, ten years ago?’ his brow pinches in concern. ‘Is it enough?’

‘It was enough for you and me,’ you remind him.

Of course, the creature that has twisted itself into Galen’s shape has followed you much longer than you ever knew the real Galen. It has curled its sinuous, malleable form around you, pushing and stalking you through the ranks of the organisation still worth calling the Rebellion. The disadvantages of a spy who can barely keep his grip on reality are far outweighed by the advantages of a spy who can rearrange his memory—if he’s friendly with the creature that holds onto it.

A tentacle nudges affectionately at your hip.

‘You’re lucky I love you,’ you tell him, because it is, and you do.

A strategy droid is not a mairan, but there are similarities. They share the ability to lay out all the possibilities and organise them into facts; continuity; truth; probability. Bor Gullet fixates on the past: it analyses the integrity of your decision to help the Rebellion, tangled up in your feelings for Galen and your loyalty to Jedha. K-2SO works in the future, foreclosing and then ranking each potential string of events to fuse lines between the likeliest and the most ideal. Two questions in the same language: _what led us here?/where will this lead us?_

The difference is only palpable if you contextualise the present as _now._ But _now_ is a messy, meaty, human substance. We need your fragile, subjective interpretation of time as an anchor: this is why the interface is always beautiful, and always a crisis. You make things very difficult for us, but stars, how we love you anyway.

 _Now,_ you send back one signal, on the hyperlane frequency. A long ringing note that gives you a toothache and makes the monster wriggle its sensitive tendrils. Turn your head to feel the chime fade in and out, testing it’s not tinnitus.

The tone is binary, a single letter that will rattle this frequency from the Core to Wild Space and back. Easily dismissed as interference, a byproduct of all the invisible words that travel beneath the surface of the networks. Interference is your signature, after all.

You are calling him: _K._


	8. In For A Penny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NIM and Doctor Korden come from [Reach](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27735787/chapters/67886005), Bright_Elen's fantastic story. Go read it! This fic is much more enjoyable as an alternate-timeline version of Reach.

They could have stayed in the Outer Rim, made a quiet life for themselves.

Kay didn’t say it aloud as he shoved Cassian into the escape pod. Cassian tried to fight him, but his eye was glazing over, voice getting weak. His right arm hung from the shoulder, helpless to abort the disconnection sequence. Then he was gone, safe, his pod tumbling into the atmosphere of Kijimi.

Kay didn’t say anything more for a long time. There was no point. He calculated the trajectory of a KX droid flung loose from a crashing ship in open space. He allocated enough power to transmit the projected coordinates for a year. He indulged in one last scenario, where Cassian landed safely, got medical attention, and came looking for him.

The margin was slim, but they’d beat worse odds together. He shut down with the imprint of that promise to himself echoing through his code.

It took two years. When Cassian’s new dataspike jacked into the back of Kay’s head and brought him flaring back to consciousness, the promise was the first thing he found.

*

‘I’ve met someone.’

Kay had felt degrees of resentment toward Cassian’s various paramours, but nothing was ever serious enough to warrant jealousy—an affect Kay would now categorise as jealousy, anyway.

Cassian was oiling the joints in his right arm, and Kay struggled not to stare. Cassian had a habit of extending his fingers past their human capacity when he was running diagnostics. The strain and release of each hinge set off spirals of calculus in Kay’s systems, the intricate geometries of Cassian.

( _Shouldn’t it be obvious by now?_ You will ask this, and one of them will laugh. Kay’s code is a unique, complex, contradictory matrix that an organic like Cassian barely got a glimpse at let, alone understood, the only time he had reason to jack into Kay’s skull. When Kay calibrates Cassian’s optic software, he sees impulses, pathways, a network as fickle and impenetrable as Kay’s—except, as Kay said, wetter.)

‘Will I have to kill them?’ Kay asked, his tone meticulously dry.

’Probably not,’ Cassian smirked, without looking up from the cloth he was looping between the pistons of his forearm. He never wore synthskin if he could help it. Kay could not find the words to ask why. ‘She’s a doctor.’

‘What kind of doctor?’ Kay tilted his chin. Cassian usually avoided them at all costs.

‘A bioengineer,’ Cassian said. ’She’s designed a neurologically-controlled drone.’

He reached over in a smooth movement to activate the holoprojector. Kay studied the schematic of a spider-like device called NIM. It was designed to rest like a backpack on a humanoid body. Eight metal limbs telescoped out, twisting and contorting into a series of useful functions, then they detached to operate as an independent unit. Cassian switched to the interface specs before Kay had to ask. The medical projections were strong, but there was only one test subject so far.

‘She’s been looking for volunteers,’ Cassian said.

‘A neural implant is risky,’ Kay peered at the data. He was already cross-referencing it with Cassian’s neurological history.

 _‘How_ risky?’ Cassian cocked his head. His hair shifted around the dataport at the top of his spine, and the irony wasn’t lost on Kay.

Kay couldn’t narrow his eyes, but he could slit his optics in a way Cassian understood.

Cassian sighed, sitting upright. He left the dataspike that projected from his wrist peeking half-out. No droid would do something so careless. It was human to the point of obscenity.

‘I won’t do it if you think we shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘This would be optional.’

Rather than focusing on _why—_ that was too complicated a question, one Cassian definitely wasn’t ready to answer—Kay did what he did best. He ran the scenarios of Cassian having an irreparable adverse reaction. He projected their chances of successfully gathering and feeding intel to the Rebellion if Cassian remained as he was. Then he contrasted the odds of Cassian’s survival if he had eight mechanical tentacles to help him.

His flow tripped over, a startling hitch, at the scenario of Cassian with eight mechanical tentacles. His vocabulator made a sound worryingly close to a purr: fortunately it was too low for Cassian to hear. He tamed it into a normal range before he spoke.

‘You should.’

Cassian’s eyes were a little brighter, even the cybernetic one. The smile tugged at his cheek, but he wasn’t letting it catch.

‘I’ll tell Korden,’ he nodded, and his dataspike slipped back into its slot. Then he stretched each hand, metal and flesh, cycling his fingers through their normal range of motion.

‘Very well,’ Kay nodded, a fraction of a second later than he should have.

The corners of Cassian’s eyes crinkled, and he beckoned Kay over. ‘When was the last time you did yours?’

Kay sighed, but he proffered his arm. ’I don’t know if I should say _trust you to maintain your droid parts when you barely took care of the human ones,_ or _trust you to develop a self-care routine in my absence after years of me on your back about it.’_

Cassian huffed a laugh. ‘Settle for _trust me?’_

He ran a brush under the plating of Kay’s palm. There was minimal dirt underneath, since Cassian did this so frequently for both of them. Still, his lower lip drew between his teeth as he concentrated, left hand used to search and steady while his right had stronger precision. He was careful not to catch on the scoring that patterned Kay’s chassis, dotting oil into the joints that creaked. There was a telltale click as his eye zoomed on the wrist, and he trimmed down a wire that was beginning to fray.

Kay would have left it until the whole node was detached, but he didn’t complain. Cassian pressed a sensor and Kay’s fingertips twitched. The small nod it prompted from Cassian was something else to store in his archives. Cassian had always been dextrous, but the tapered points of his new fingertips could reach different spaces between Kay’s parts, steering a soft cloth to catch the dust attracted by static—dust that accumulated from such close proximity to a human.

Cassian nudged at Kay’s forearm until Kay popped out his dataspike. The amount of oil Cassian used, it would slip out without a whisper. Cassian circled it with his fingers: although the haptic sensors in the right hand were as strong as Kay’s, he always checked his work with the left as well.

(It does not occur to Kay that it wasn’t about Cassian feeling Kay’s chassis: it was for Kay to feel Cassian’s skin).

‘I’ve been thinking about another dataport,’ Cassian’s voice was barely a breath. ‘One that’s easier to reach.’

Cassian’s tendency to hyperextend his prosthetic joints meant that he could, if pressed, get the dataspike in his arm jacked into the skull port. NIM would likely be useful in that respect, too.

Cassian tapped the soft skin of his inner elbow. Kay regarded it, imagining another hollow, another piece of Cassian changed. He imagined being able to jack in while seeing Cassian’s face.

‘It would suit you.’

Cassian—there was no other word Kay had to describe it— _glowed_.

The packing away of the toolkit was its own ritual. It was conducted silently, and concluded with Cassian stretching to tuck it away on a high shelf. He had to twist, almost on tip-toe to reach, but Kay knew better than to offer help. Besides, the hint of Cassian’s hip as his shirt tugged up was at Kay’s eye level like this. There was no mystery in seeing Cassian’s skin: there had never been any purpose for shyness between them. But still.

He looked fragile, even though Kay knew perfectly well there was durasteel instead of bone beneath that skin.


	9. Weight

How many times must we go through this, my dear?

It will never be enough.

There’s a hand you played in the destruction of Jedha, of Scarif, of Alderaan. The same hum of a freighter’s engine that lulls you to sleep now, once carried the kyber torn from under your feet, under your mother’s feet, your sisters’, your grandfathers’,the kids you used to race speeders with and the woman who gave you free dumplings as a boy and everyone else in that city turned to dust.

Because of you.

And a decision you made, a selfish decision in the heat of the moment, to prove something to a man who’d lived in the Empire’s comfortable lap: the right choice for the wrong reasons.

If you hadn’t stayed in the ship on Scarif, if you’d helped Baze and Chirrut to the master switch, maybe they’d still be alive. If the transmission bought Syndulla an extra minute, she might have made it to the beach before Jyn was killed. And Melshi, and—and that man, whose name you don’t remember, who’d looked faithfully at you and ran when you told him to run— _you should remember his name._

At the least, you might have died a hero.

Write another report, collate the intel from your dead drops, record another cylinder of skimmed comms. Jot down your hunches with shaky hands and skittering eyes, pass them quietly to the brass and accept promotions with reluctance, and never tell anyone your name.

How many messages can you carry for the Rebellion? Will it ever weigh as much as kyber?

Of course it won’t. Cassian Andor bought his freedom with twenty years of faithful service. And even afterwards, he finds ways to pass along little favours. You wonder when he finds you—when he asks you—how will you say no? You cannot leave the Rebellion. Your loyalty comes from somewhere else, and you will never

ever

pay off that debt.


	10. Of Electric Banthas

‘Kay,’ Cassian couldn’t keep the tremor from his voice. ‘I need you to see this.’

NIM was already scurrying back to their hideout. Cassian couldn’t split his attention, not with this new discovery on his mind: he listed against the wall, and Kay darted in to catch him.

‘See what?’ Kay swept Cassian’s hair out of his eyes.

NIM would be home in moments: Cassian knew the path well enough that he could let it weave through the tunnels.

‘I saw someone,’ Cassian shook his head. ‘I thought—but—just take a look.’

‘Did they find us?’ Kay tipped Cassian’s chin up, drawing his attention. ‘Cassian, do we need to leave?’

‘We’re fine,’ Cassian lifted Kay’s hand away, but didn’t let go of the wrist. ‘It’s not that.’

He couldn’t put it into words. Not with the hope that was bubbling too light in his chest. There was always a moment when NIM was in another part of the room, and the stereoscopic view made Cassian’s stomach turn. Then the unit settled betweenhis shoulder blades, magnetising to his ribs with a satisfying _click._ One arm snaked out, the holoprojector emerging from its tip and showing Kay the footage.

It was the casino overground. NIM had been crawling through the vents to eavesdrop on the private sabacc games played between smugglers. There was often information passing between them, giving Cassian something he could send to the Rebels via Kay’s encrypted dispatches.

NIM focused on one player, a human hunched between a Togruta and a Zygerrian. It was hard for NIM to capture his features through the grille of the vent, and the holoprojector couldn’t show the dark of his eyes, the texture of the scars on the shadowy side of his face. Kay’s processors purred in thought.

‘Is it him?’ Cassian breathed. He stepped closer, until the blue flicker filled the space between them. Kay’s optics shone through the cards. ‘Kay, what are the odds?’

‘Seventeen point three-three percent,’ Kay answered immediately. ‘I can’t confirm a match.’

‘It’s Bodhi,’ Cassian frowned, NIM’s free tentacles curling in frustration. ‘Can I just… can you _look?_ ’

Kay arched, preparing a retort, when Cassian shut off the holoprojector and shoved his arm between them. Kay’s optics darted to the dataport.

‘Let me show you what I saw,’ Cassian murmured. His heart was still racing. ‘Then tell me it’s not him.’

Kay touched his skin in sympathy, dataspike sheathed. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I want to be certain I’m wrong,’ Cassian admitted. ‘Or I want—you should get to see him, too.’

Kay never spiked him without good reason: he’d given Cassian the tools to run his own upkeep on the eye. Cassian gave Kay the time to run the worst-case scenarios, while one of NIM’s tentacles nudged at Kay’s wrist, luring the spike out. Kay gave it a withering look, which Cassian ignored.

‘If it will settle your mind,’ Kay decided, his left hand coming up to cradle Cassian’s elbow.

Cassian held still, and Kay locked them together.

At first, the feeling was simply heavy. Kay had a basic interface established with NIM, in case of emergencies, but he’d explained to Cassian: _the rig acts directly from your subconscious, not a software like the eye._ He let Cassian steer him toward NIM’s surveillance archives. Kay’s presence had a bristle of trepidation to it, but curiosity sparked off him like static. He’d made a show of indulging Cassian’s flight of fancy, but now they were connected, Cassian could sense the threads of possibility that clamoured for more data.

‘Tickles,’ he said, and Kay’s optics flashed sarcastically. He never much liked to talk when he was slicing.

Cassian fell silent as NIM played out the scene. The tentacle camera wasn’t quite as precise as his cybernetic eye, but still better than the human one. Cassian wasn’t one for sabacc, but the potential to pick up on microexpressions was— _enough of that._ Kay didn’t speak, but the driving imperative was clear.

The human entered without a word, only nodding to the dealer. His gait had a subtle imbalance to it: an old injury, or a prosthetic leg? NIM’s audio suddenly ratcheted higher: Kay was checking too. The carpet was too soft to distinguish from sound, but Cassian guessed from the way Kay folded the data into a growing trunk that the chances were favourable, if not certain.

A hook of doubt sank into Cassian as the player took his seat. He’d ascribed the lack of detail to NIM’s holoprojector, but looking again through the original lens, it really was difficult. He retreated, no longer willing to waste Kay’s time, but Kay held him there with stubborn forbearance.

His hair was long, still, much greyer than most humans in their early thirties. The stress could account for that. He wore gloves, and kept his face deliberately in shadow.Cassian studied the eyes: wide, darting, always lowered when someone was looking at him. Kay was analysing their shape, then the structure of the nose, whatever they could catch that wasn’t obscured by the grille. They were both so intent on his cheekbones that they nearly missed the man taking his gloves off.

‘That’s your—‘

_‘—that’s my fucking arm.’_

Anticipation built like a thunderhead, until the man turned to hear something a Devarorian player said. Then the storm broke: a pattern of burns that matched the shape of Bodhi’s wounds from Scarif.

’Bodhi Rook,’ Kay’s voice had a hint of wonder. ‘A thousand to one.’

‘Yes,’ Cassian hissed. ‘Yes! He’s a smuggler now?’

‘No, look,’ Kay refocused, and Cassian had to steady himself on Kay’s shoulder at the strangeness of NIM’s playback changing on command. The Devarorian tossed aholoprojector into the pool. The image was mostly obscured by the dealer’s shoulder, but Kay highlighted the spiky angles of a starfighter. Kay flipped the mirrored text to confirm the specs: a dozen models written off with minor hyperdrive issues.

The man was betting with X-Wings, and Bodhi was going to win.

‘He’s working for the Rebellion,’ Kay said.

NIM tensed, and Kay felt the constriction in the code. He slipped out, squeezed by Cassian’s ambivalence, and when Cassian tried to catch him, it was with a tentacle that tugged petulantly on Kay’s arm. Kay let it weave around him, parting his fingers so Cassian could nudge between them—it was a thoughtless stimulation he often did with his own hand.

‘He’s alive,’ Cassian reminded himself. ‘He _made it.’_

He smoothed a hand over his beard. There was a hangnail he refused to bite.

‘What are the odds he’d try to bring us in?’ Cassian raised an eyebrow.

Kay caught one of NIM’s limbs, squeezing it until it settled.

‘Try?’ he asked. ‘Or succeed?’

*

The whirring fan woke Cassian. He winced as he rolled over, keeping the scarring on his back away from the mattress. Kay’s optics were dimmed for the night, but they flickered like he was crunching heavy data. Cassian squinted his old eye shut, focusing on infrared. Kay’s chassis lit up with heat, his fans barely managing to keep up. He shouldn’t be processing much of anything when he was seated and charging.

‘Kay?’ he croaked. When Kay didn’t respond, he repeated the name louder. NIM crawled to Kay, prodding his foot. Nothing happened.

Cassian sat up, adrenaline flushing out his exhaustion. Kay couldn’t be sliced without a connection, but maybe the charging port, or a dormant worm—Cassian was already scrambling into Kay’s lap, NIM tilting Kay’s head forward to expose his dataport. Kay’s chest was hot, thrumming with the force of his fans in overdrive.

Cassian wrapped his arm around Kay’s shoulder, thrusting his spike out. After one moment of checking Kay’s optics, and the plunging chill in his stomach when he found no recognition, he plunged the spike into Kay’s head.

Inside Kay was a wall of ice, clear and smooth. Cassian only knew the basics of slicing, imitating the feeling of Kay moving through his head. He tried chipping at the surface and rebounded with a force that made his tongue hurt. There was something on the other side, a vibration as subtle as an earthquake. Cassian tried scaling the wall, and slipped off its edges to land, damp, where he started. Heat? He attempted to channel the scorching temperature of Kay’s chassis into melting the defensive surface. There was a moment of fluidity, then the wall reformed opaque. Human metaphors would only get him so far.

‘Kay!’ he called out, and the sound echoed from his ears to his systems. His heart was beating faster, calling attention away from the slice, and he pumped the urgency of it into Kay’s network. ‘Wake up!’

He had to focus, splitting the inside/outside sensations. The rumbling grew stronger, almost unseating Cassian/inside. He braced his knees around Kay’s thighs/outside, NIM scrambling onto his back to secure him on the chair.

He couldn’t get past the barricade. If someone was slicing Kay beyond the wall, they were doing a better job than Cassian could hope to. Kay would berate him for being stupid: what other strategies would work?

Cassian’s awareness curled in on itself. What would lure Kay out, if he couldn’t get in? A problem, its many solutions unfurling as Cassian cradled it. He stroked and nudged the budding branches that formed from the hypotheticals, each divergence fizzing with potential. A sapling made of lightning: prettier than Cassian could have imagined, and irresistible to a strategy droid.

The ice dropped in a solid sheet, blowback blasting Cassian with cold. Kay’s awareness was a stampede, and Cassian hunched to protect the plant.

_Cassian!_

The word wasn’t from Kay’s vocabulator: it rang everywhere, admonishing and prickled with fear.

‘Kay?’ he spoke aloud, and aurebesh wriggled under his tongue. There was a wrinkle of bemusement at his clumsiness. ‘What happened?’

_You shouldn’t be here._

Cassian unfolded, but the wall clicked uncomfortably.

_No. Don’t go._

‘Did you get sliced?’ Cassian asked. Outside, his breath was so near it fogged Kay’s faceplate. Inside, Kay helped him upright.

 _If I was sliced, you’d be dead,_ Kay said. The ground tilted fractionally toward the wall. Cassian leaned to keep his balance. _You’re an idiot._

‘I had to help,’ Cassian shrugged, dimly aware of NIM winding its way around Kay’s waist/outside. Inside/Kay’s attention settled like gravity on the lure Cassian had created.

 _Did you make that for me?_ Kay asked.

Cassian held it out, and Kay took it. The tree curved inwards, neatly winnowed into a single point. It swayed like seaweed in a tide pool.

 _It’s very small,_ Kay said.

Cassian snorted. _It worked._

This time the words were only inside, and he had only Kay’s gust of fondness to confirm they’d been understood.

 _The odds that I would have overpowered you…_ Kay trailed off. Sudden pressure tugged Cassian’s eardrums/inside, a rush of ozone and a skittering swirl of air. Thunder, or an earthquake, or the feeling of Jedha shattering underfoot.

 _NIM can take care of me,_ Cassian said. Before Kay could argue, he pressed: _If you weren’t sliced, what happened?_

There was a pause. Outside/it only lasted a fraction of a second, but inside/Cassian could see the torrent of decisions, stacking themselves like towers of crates that threatened to pitch over with the ongoing reverberations.

 _A bug,_ Kay said. _Just a bug._

Inside/Cassian went to the sturdiest column, propping it up. Outside/Kay’s fans began to slow.

 _Explain it to me?_ Cassian turned toward the shadow-shape. It wasn’t Kay, exactly, because _everything_ inside was Kay, but words seemed to come from it. An avatar, Cassian realised. Its shoulders rose and fell with a sigh.

 _I run scenarios when I’m charging,_ Kay said. The admission was slow, as if it cost him something. _Low-priority simulations to keep the system from idling._

Outside/a tentacle wriggled curiously. Kay noticed: he was better at delegating his attention. If Cassian squinted upward, he could make out the flow of Kay’s sensory array: it was a little like seeing sunlight from under the sea.

_I had one running about your odds surviving poisons. It was meant to conclude when it finalised the calculations, but it…_

The thunder was constant, now, almost enough to drown out Kay. Cassian stumbled, and Kay caught him.

_It got stuck in a loop._

Cassian moved toward the vibrations, Kay trailing behind him. It was coming from a sunken part of the ground, the slope tilting suddenly as they got closer. A sinkhole with an ever-deepening spiral, pushing so deep Cassian got vertigo. The bass rumbling from its epicentre threatened to pitch he and Kay tumbling into its depths.

 _‘Oh,’_ he said/outside, and inside/too. _You had a nightmare._

 _I don’t…_ Kay’s optics tilted/outside, and Cassian had the uncanny sensation of his own face being processed through Kay’s systems. _I suppose it’s not a terrible analogy._

(Is it a human quirk he’s picked up, from all the time he’s spent in Cassian’s wetware? Or simply a glitch from years of overwriting his own code? And who gave him the power to write his own code—the capacity for error? Every road leads back to Cassian: but enough of that. It is a mairan’s habit to look back. The strategist looks forward.)

 _I should be able to patch it,_ Kay continued, stepping back from the sinkhole. _Those contacts on Kalee probably make firmware that doesn’t override autonomous programming._

There was one word that Cassian caught, as much as Kay wanted it to vanish into the ephemerality of whatever platform they were using to communicate. _Should._ He couldn’t fix it himself.

That’s why the hole still ached, its growl shaking beneath them.

 _That first time you jacked into me, you stopped me from having a panic attack,_ Cassian recalled. _You were slowing my heart down, getting me to breathe. I could try._

_It’s a little more complicated than—_

Cassian reached up, and outside/NIM arched. Inside/Kay watched, distracted, even as outside/the tentacles only looped in the air, indulging in Cassian’s imagination. He only needed the kit /inside.

He stepped into the hole, and Kay’s yelp of fright cut short.

Cassian was dying: his skin burned and his throat filled with crushed glass. Then his stomach was hollow, eating away at his insides as toxins devoured him. Eyes thick with mucus, lungs simply refusing to inhale—tired, he was _tired._ The next death was slow, bruises blossoming on his skin and a tang in the roof of his mouth. Or it could happen quickly, a gentle vice around his throat, heart too shallow to pump.

Cassian frowned. He stepped back. The scenario thrashed and flung itself toward him, trying to snatch him back into its simulations. The other simulations grew like trees, but this one was a root system, loosening the earth as it twisted and burrowed and seeped its vile potentia into Kay. It was blunt, on this side, where Kay had clearly tried to hack it into a stump and nearly overheated his chassis in doing so.

 _It will hurt you,_ Kay’s worry cupped Cassian, scooping him away from the scenario’s reach. Outside/Kay’s palm was cradling his face, but Cassian didn’t notice.

 _‘It’s just a simulation,’_ Cassian spoke. His lungs worked fine: he could talk. Let that plunge through Kay’s sensory array and into the strategic matrix. ‘ _It’s not real.’_

Cassian closed his eyes, breathing in. Outside/he braced forefinger and thumb on either side of Kay’s dataport, his haptic feed anchoring him in the smooth surface of durasteel.

_I’ve got you._

He set to work.

The task, as he figured it, wasn’t unlike cleaning Kay’s exterior. He brushed the prickly jumbles of code, nonsense digits they didn’t need. Smoothing over the brittle threads of possibilities until the surfaces were smoothed down, soldering the fraying edges into certainty. The jarring turn of each juncture could be oiled, if he made himself slick enough, a silent swing between _this_ or _that._ Finally, the cloth, tucked snug around his finger and swiping away the excess, digging into every crevice and nook of rogue processes.

There was a _clank_ that Cassian didn’t hear, but felt in his molars.

_Oh._

Kay pushed gingerly at the program, and it folded shut. Outside/Kay’s fans whirred to their base setting. Cassian shuffled forward, until his chest was pressed to Kay’s chassis: it was beginning to cool.

 _Is it done?_ he asked. Outside/his lips moved in the shape. It helped, being in both worlds: the vibrations he felt were only Kay’s drives processing the interface.

 _It would appear to be,_ Kay murmured. He bent to nip the bug, turning it gently over until its shape changed. Then he popped it back into the program.

Cassian sighed, realising outside/his eyes were closed. He rested his forehead on Kay’s.

 _‘Do you need to run diagnostics?’_ he asked.

 _It can wait,_ Kay said.

‘Should I…?’ Cassian sat forward, ready to disconnect his spike.

‘ _Cassian.’_

Outside/the vocabulator was hardly a buzzing, but inside/the word rang clear.

_I would like for you to stay._

Inside/Kay led him away from the strategies, closer to the sensory array.

Outside/Kay’s hands were resting on his thighs.

Inside/warmth, heartbeat, the satisfying interlace in the weave of Cassian’s pants. Outside/the tension as Cassian clenched, bracketing Kay’s hips. Inside/a cascade of stimulus, bright and heavy, Cassian’s instinctive movement shimmering through Kay’s systems.

Cassian’s breath caught. He couldn’t hide the wonder from Kay, not when his consciousness was half-inside him, just as Kay couldn’t hide the burst of pleasure at how Cassian moved around him.

 _Is this what it looks like?_ Cassian asked. He had to focus to find his left hand, stroking a fingertip at the joint of Kay’s shoulder.

 _When you touch me,_ Kay didn’t quite phrase it as a question. _Yes._

_I expected... I don’t know. Ones and zeroes?_

_You use human parables to make sense of it,_ Kay nodded. _We were first coded by organics._

 _Does it…?_ Cassian let his attention slip /outside, his touch trailing down to Kay’s abdomen, under the plating. _Does it feel like this whenever I touch you?_

He had the answer already, a storm of input surging around Cassian’s hand. Kay’s fingers clenched, and the gasp it drew from Cassian set off aural reactions too strong to parse.

_When I clean you?_

There was a thrumming underfoot as a simulation launched. Cassian’s chest tightened, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. Kay replayed for him every intricate movement, the ritual Cassian already knew complemented by the sight of Cassian’s hair untucking from his ear as he concentrated, the rhythm of his breathing as it flowed with his immersion in the project, the gentle pulse of his heartbeat in his fingertips, the pleasing parallel of his metal hand and Kay’s.

 _‘Kay,’_ he whined. ‘You never said.’

 _How would I describe it?_ Kay quirked his head. ‘ _How would_ you?’

Cassian opened his mouth, and nothing came out. He fumbled for the words, but NIM thought quicker. One of its tendrils hooked around Kay’s hand, guiding it inward, until Kay was cupping his erection.

‘Like _that,’_ he didn’t try to hide the hitch in his voice, grinding into Kay’s touch.

Whether he was feeding pleasure through the dataspike, or Kay was picking it up haptically, Cassian couldn’t discern, because arousal flooded through him and sent bursts of liquid gold through Kay’s matrix.

 _Cassian,_ Kay didn’t voice that one, barely even turned it into words: an impression, a Cassian-shaped sense that pressed into him.

‘More,’ Cassian murmured, writhing into Kay’s palm. ‘I want _more.’_

NIM was better at this, lifting Cassian’s hips to slide his pants down, two tentacles bracing on the ceiling and one on the floor—Kay was transfixed—as he settled naked in Kay’s lap. Another tentacle wove in to unclip the panel protecting Kay’s wiring, slipping inside to play at the bundle of wires that fed Kay’s sensory input. A cautious stroke: Cassian /inside watched fireworks crackle. Curling and squeezing /outside had Kay /inside molten, flowing, siphoned carefully to forestall an overflow. Cassian petted the node with the very tip of his tentacle, and Kay’s tingling irritation at being teased made him grin.

Kay’s vengeance came in the form of a hand around his cock, pumping with such distracting precision that Cassian’s awareness almost slipped off the tip of the spike. He thrust his hips, chest pressed tightly to Kay’s, tentacles squirming around every limb they could find. One nudged along his own tailbone, and his surprise must have been tangible: Kay arched with interest as Cassian slipped the head of it lower, metal dragging on skin.

‘Kay, please…’ he swallowed, pushing his left arm forward until the dataport was between them. ‘I need _you.’_

Kay studied his face, and Cassian /inside caught the cataloguing of lucidity, a quick scenario running through the likelihood that Cassian would regret initiating a mutual feed, the projection of how much pleasure Kay could bring him if he jacked in. Kay’s strength if he bore down against the metal tentacle that petulantly tugged him forward, trying to lure his dataspike out of its slot.

‘Hold _still,’_ Kay ordered him. Cassian restricted himself to a slow roll of his hips, while Kay lined up. ‘You may find the loop to be…’

Words shuffled through Kay’s thoughts, and Cassian snorted.

‘Overstimulating?’

Kay’s optics tilted in a very accurate simulation of rolling his eyes. Then he jacked in, and Cassian lost consciousness.

He regained it /inside, a charge knocking into him and Kay’s fond exasperation breaking his fall. /Outside, NIM was holding him upright, still clinging to Kay and touching him wherever it could.

It _was_ difficult, his awareness split across their respective interiors, the physical space between them, and the input of his cybernetics. A swoop of delirium was cut short by Kay: Cassian could barely follow the speed at which Kay propped him up, streamlining the interfaces until Cassian could move smoothly between them.

‘How do I—‘

 _It will take practice,_ Kay told him. _Call this a tutorial._

He grinned, and Kay mirrored with something that felt a lot like smiling. There was barely enough time to steady himself in the flux before Kay began to stroke his cock again, feeding the sensations back to Cassian through his own rewards matrix. A sucking pressure in Cassian’s mind, then the sudden bloom of release: Kay was reading his responses, touching him exactly how he liked to be touched, and copying the pleasure back into his own system. Cassian choked on a laugh, interrupted by another gasp.

 _You’re showing off,_ he accused Kay.

_‘Yes.’_

Cassian’s cock was throbbing, leaking over Kay’s fingers— _I’m sorry/you’re cleaning that up later/yes I am—_ velvet skin and flushed red, a cycle of input that he could barely follow before he—

and then Kay stopped.

‘Fuck!’ he moaned, trying to shove himself back into Kay’s grasp. ‘Kay, _please!’_

Kay seized his attention with a jolt of energy down Cassian’s spine. He almost came from that, as well. Kay followed the spiral of it, pleased at how he’d skirted under the limits of Cassian’s arousal, and he sent a tingling aftershock in case Cassian had any ideas about regaining his equilibrium too soon.

 _‘Pay attention,’_ Kay said, optics brightening until Cassian was inside him again. ‘I’m going to send you a pulse.’

Cassian focused on how Kay charged the dataspike, a command without any function behind it, loaded and fit to burst the moment he pumped it into Cassian. It was only because Cassian _was_ paying attention that he didn’t black out when Kay unleashed it inside him.

Still, he screamed, toes curling and chest heaving as it lit up every nerve. He had to look down to check he hadn’t come: Kay had a loose grip on his cock, not letting it fill any further, and a firmer grip on his mind.

 _Now send one to me,_ Kay said, and added: _Gently._

Cassian nodded, unable to close his mouth. Kay was unable to stop focusing on how Cassian couldn’t close his mouth.

_I won’t hurt you?_

_There’s a ceiling on yours,_ Kay said. _Until you learn how to use that spike properly._

Now that Cassian knew when Kay was running simulations, he could snoop at them: just the potential of Cassian jamming Kay’s systems with pleasure almost sent him over.

He concentrated. Charge, pack, release. He watched the result flutter through Kay.

_Bigger._

This time it echoed through the space, bouncing fast without building to a cascade. Cassian sent a sequence of pulses, until the rush was growing in Kay. Then he pushed a spark through the tentacle that was buried in Kay’s chassis, wrapped around the wiring.

_Fuck!_

_Did it hurt?_ Cassian was already searching Kay’s systems for an overload, but it was only an undercurrent of direct pressure, ricocheting the pulses instead of letting them fade.

_Do it again._

Cassian did, and Kay threaded their sensory apparatus together, giving as good as he was getting. It seemed selfish, almost, and thinking the idea made Kay laugh.

‘Kay,’ Cassian’s voice was getting raw. His cheeks were damp, he realised, blinking sticky lashes and checking through Kay’s eyes that yes—he’d been crying. ‘Kay, will you fuck me?’

‘I can make you come like this,’ Kay sent another surge into him, stroking his cock.

‘But I _want_ you to fuck me,’ Cassian pulled Kay as close as he could.

Kay made a gesture that reminded Cassian that one hand was on his cock and the other was jacked into his dataport, and unlike some people, he didn’t have twelve limbs.

‘Take NIM,’ Cassian panted. ‘You’ve already got the interface.’

The simulations were running, fantasies of Kay in possession of eight metal tentacles to play with. The risk assessment was— _don’t think you can interpret my risk assessments, you’re pathologically bad at it—_ minimal.

‘If you don’t fuck me, I’m going to fuck myself,’ Cassian whined. Kay’s laughter at the emptiness of this threat reverberated through both of them.

 _I’m taking half,_ Kay said. _Because I want you to keep up with this._

He angled his chest, prompting Cassian to slither around his wires some more. The noise that came out of his vocabulator sounded something like coaxium exploding.

It was numbness at first, then the strange secondhand phenomenon of feeling NIM via Kay’s consciousness.

Four of the tentacles bunched, contracting and stretching until Kay had a sense of their movement. His processors hummed loudly while he mapped their operation, crunching the weeks it took Cassian to calibrate into seconds. They moved differently with a droid controlling them, a certain swivelling motion that Cassian would immediately recognise as inorganic. Kay noticed his observation, flicking playfully at the tentacles Cassian still controlled. Cassian sent a simmering stream into Kay’s node, revelling when Kay’s attention oscillated back toward him.

A nimble tentacle slid down the cleft of his ass, wriggling and rubbing as Cassian rocked back against it.

_You really are sensitive there, aren’t you?_

Cassian exhaled, letting it wash over Kay. Two more appendages spread his ass, kneading into the flesh and prompting a groan from Cassian. Kay let out an audible _hmm,_ and Cassian watched him catalogue the new data on Cassian’s responses. The archive was— _yes, I know—_ huge.

The tentacle nudged at his rim, then hesitated.

‘There’s lubricant in the fresher,’ Kay said.

Cassian bit his lip in frustration. ‘I don’t need it.’

‘The diameter of the tip—‘

‘—it fits.’

Kay couldn’t read Cassian’s memories, but he could register the rush of heat in his cheeks.

_I see._

And then he amended: _I’d_ like _to see._

Cassian opened his mouth to promise, and all that spilled out was a whimper as Kay slipped the tentacle inside. Then a fourth tentacle tucked itself behind Cassian’s balls, and Cassian’s world turned white.

Kay kept his processes running, the flux in a holding pattern until Cassian could pick it up again. He was quivering, slick with sweat, Kay’s grip on his cock pausing until he could slide himself back into place.

Kay pressed the tentacle deeper, chasing the sensation, and then he found it.

 _Whoa,_ Kay said, and Cassian burst out laughing. Kay pressed again and the laugh became a howl.

 _There you are,_ Kay thrust into him, increasing the oscillation of pulses through Cassian’s dataport, stroking him quicker. _That’s good. That feels good, Cassian, that feels—_

Kay trailed off, overwhelming himself with the amplifying torrent when his own praise sent Cassian’s heart racing.

_You’re going to—_

_I’m going to—_

Cassian pushed a final surge into Kay’s core, the impact slamming through both of them. The scream that tore out of his throat wasn’t entirely his own.

Kay let the pleasure cycle through them until it had played their senses raw, a looping melody of code that could no longer be distinguished as synthetic or organic in its origin. Cassian whimpered when he felt the disengagement operations begin, but he didn’t protest as Kay rescinded control of NIM, the tentacles furling tightly into an embrace. He untangled the appendage that had snaked through Kay’s chest, though it didn’t entirely let him go, settling around his hip.

Kay brushed a lock of hair from Cassian’s forehead, the fingertips of his other hand drumming a soft pattern around the dataport.

 _For now,_ Kay promised, then his spike was retracting.

Cassian gasped at the loss, tears welling fresh in his eyes.

 _Take your time,_ Kay soothed him. Cassian’s muscles were beginning to ache, but the idea of leaving was too much. He sobbed, and it came out as a cough.

 _Here,_ Kay spoke softer than he could with the vocoder. _Look._

The little tree Cassian had made was taking root.

 _I’m keeping it,_ Kay said.

‘Isn’t it small?’ Cassian croaked, resting his head on Kay’s shoulder. Kay touched one of the forks, and new possibilities sparked out of it.

 _It will grow_.


	11. Choke

It’s not the first time pirates have attacked your freighter, but you’ve never discovered an attack via the hull breach warning before. You spare half a second to marvel at the cloaking system their ship must have, before you initiate the lockdown sequence and heft a rifle with some very illegal modifications.

The breach is in the galley, putting the pirates between you and the cargo. You yank a toggle in the cockpit and dump the load: there’s a chance they’ll chase after it, leaving you for dead. The Rebellion can always buy more fuel cells—assuming the pirates are after fuel cells, and not the cylinders of data that fill your pockets.

No such luck: their ship doesn’t uncouple as the crates tumble into space. A depressurisation light only flares briefly before the attackers secure a seal. You keep the cockpit door locked, rifle nestled in your shoulder where the kickback would knock an organic joint out of its socket.

There’s no voices on the other side, just a skitter and a _tink_ underfoot. An infiltration droid, you guess. You swing the rifle toward the vent overhead.

The shot goes wide, because the droid is quick. The movement is too organic: the sight makes you skin crawl. It slithers fast, pouncing on your shoulders and snatching your weapon. Seething limbs pin you down, focusing on securing your right arm and leg. A tentacle winds its way around your throat. You struggle, and the grip tightens until you’re seeing stars.

Sink away from this. You know how to do it, don’t you? How to disappear when the monster engulfs you, how to be nobody at all. To flow until the interrogator has no bones to snap, no memories to dig for, no future to threaten.

It will never be as bad as the first time.

As quickly as it restrained you, the droid lets go. You blink, unfocused, as it clambers away from where you’re slumped, and then the cockpit door hisses open. Two boots come into view, a metal tendril slipping around one of them. The pirate drops to one knee, his head cocked in surprise. A jet-black eye with a gold light in its core roves across your face, waiting for recognition to dawn. There’s a new scar weaving its way through his brow. The hair suits him, you’d like to say, but your throat is still tight from the chokehold.

‘Hello, Bodhi Rook.’

He speaks with a sardonic Imperial accent, and you realise a little too late that this is not Cassian Andor.

Not entirely.


	12. In electricity was suddenly seen the power to redeem all the dreams betrayed by the machine.

‘K-2SO?’ Bodhi asked. Cassian raised an eyebrow, while Kay’s head tilted in surprise.

‘Kaytoo was destroyed in—‘

 _Don’t lie,_ Kay interrupted. He used Cassian’s eye to focus on the shift in Bodhi’s pupils, barely perceptible in the deep dark of his irises. _He can tell._

‘He’s coming,’ Cassian amended, and Bodhi gave a wry grin.

Kay grabbed a datapad before lowering himself into the freighter’s galley. He monitored through NIM as Cassian helped Bodhi to his feet. There was a _clank_ when their metal shoulders collided, and then Cassian’s arms were around Bodhi, a clumsy embrace that Bodhi returned. Kay tightened Cassian’s fingers at Bodhi’s shoulder, while Cassian inhaled at the crook of Bodhi’s neck, passing the scent of him back to Kay. Kay archived it, along with the erratic pattern of Bodhi’s heartbeat through Cassian’s chest.

‘There you are,’ Bodhi gave him a crooked smile, edged with cynicism. He was older, widow’s peak climbing higher, more silver streaking through his hair. A delicate web of crow’s feet had developed around his eyes, not unlike Cassian’s. He had a way of watching Cassian’s mouth.

 _He’s reading your lips,_ Kay transmitted, and Cassian pinged acknowledgement. Kay handed over the datapad, and Bodhi blinked at it.

‘Unless your hearing was miraculously restored?’ Kay sent the transcript to the datapad as he spoke.

Bodhi snorted, his eyebrows quirking. ‘No. Good idea.’

NIM crawled into position on Cassian’s back, knotting itself neatly away. The tremor in Bodhi’s hand took a moment longer to pass.

‘If you’re not going to rob me,’ Bodhi peered at the two of them, ‘I should reclaim those fuel cells.’

Cassian shrugged in surprise, and Bodhi took this as permission. His fingers moved with practiced ease across the dashboard, activating the tractor beam to drag the floating cells back into the cargo bay.

‘That’s a hell of a cloak you’ve got on your ship,’ he commented.

‘We’re good at hiding,’ Cassian answered.

‘You can show me,’ Bodhi tipped his chin at Kay. ‘After you get my cargo hold back in order.’

Cassian had the decency to look contrite, while Kay decided manual labour was worthwhile as a show of good faith. The cells were scattered through the cargo hold, landing wherever the tractor had pulled them when the gravity kicked in. Bodhi steered them with abrupt gestures, and the work bought minutes of silence. Cassian used NIM to brace his weight as he pushed the final crate into place. Bodhi appraised the stacks with a critical eye, then activated the straps.

‘So,’ Cassian leaned against a crate, looking Bodhi up and down. ‘This is the new Fulcrum.’

Bodhi waved a hand, his expression flat. ‘Don’t tell me you want the title back.’

‘No,’ Cassian sighed. Kay suppressed the urge to sweep his hair out of his eyes. ‘It suits you better.’

If the tension got any thicker, it was liable to depressurise the ship. Bodhi was the one to break it, running his hand through his hair to drag it loose from its knot.

‘Why did you come?’

He was tired, and he was doing a very good impression of a sane man.

‘You called me,’ Kay reminded him.

‘I missed you,’ Bodhi’s tone made it sound like an argument.

NIM twitched, and Kay stilled it.

‘Who else knows we’re alive?’ Cassian asked.

‘Nobody,’ Bodhi shrugged. He sat Kay’s datapad on a crate, angling himself toward Cassian. ‘Who’d believe me?’

‘Intelligence can’t leave us at large,’ Cassian shook his head. ‘Not with what we know. Your protocol is to bring us in, or take us out.’

Bodhi’s nostrils flared with a sharp exhale. He looked at Cassian, then Kay. ‘Unless you kill me first.’

NIM prickled again, and Kay clamped down tighter.

‘We’re not going to kill you,’ Kay said. Bodhi glanced at the datapad, hiding his shock.

‘We’re not?’ Cassian’s voice hitched.

‘Bodhi knows I sliced the medical droids after Scarif,’ Kay told Cassian. ‘If he had told anyone, there’s a 99.9% chance we never would have made it as far as Kalee.’

 _Did he_ remember _that?_ Cassian transmitted the question, and Kay let it fall hollow in his receiver.

 _He remembers,_ Kay formed the words from ice.

‘It’s amazing,’ Bodhi pointed between them. ‘You two seem to be sharing a consciousness, and you still manage to argue with each other.’

Cassian’s mouth fell open. ‘We’re not—‘

‘I know what it looks like when someone’s living in your head,’ Bodhi snapped.

‘And you’re _very_ good at sniffing out lies, aren’t you?’ Kay’s optics slitted.

‘They didn’t make me Fulcrum out of pity,’ Bodhi drawled.

Kay watched those words spiral miserably through Cassian.

‘Show me this cloaking rig,’ Bodhi launched himself upright, grabbing the datapad. They had to hurry to follow him back to the galley, and Kay was about to offer a boost when Bodhi leapt easily at the tunnel, pulling himself through.

He was already investigating the dashboard when Kay reached the cockpit, Cassian using NIM to climb in behind them. The space was cramped enough with just Cassian and Kay: Bodhi ignored them shuffling around one another as he pulled up their readouts.

Cassian scowled. ‘Careful with the—‘

‘You put a hole in my ship,’ Bodhi didn’t turn his head—Kay suspected he’d only needed the tone to infer the words. ‘Yours can handle a poking.’

He never pulled up the nav, but he wouldn’t need to. The stealth mods, the Lothalian dash configuration, even NIM, would chart a path through the galaxy’s underground of unlicensed engineers and bioslicers. He paused, durasteel fingers skating over the comms button. He didn’t wear synthskin either: Kay didn’t have the data to analyse why, but he catalogued it all the same.

Cassian was watching too.

‘Bodhi,’ he approached from the left side, which necessitated reaching across to take the prosthetic hand. ‘When did you last oil this?’

Kay had noticed the stiff, erratic hitches in Bodhi’s joints, but that wasn’t reserved to the mechanical ones. All of him was a mess.

Bodhi shrugged, but he turned to let Cassian inspect the hand. ‘Too long, I’m guessing?’

‘You promised me you’d take care of that,’ Kay kept his tone warm.

‘You never came to check,’ Bodhi arched an eyebrow.

Cassian clicked his tongue, transmitting his assessment to Kay.

 _None of you take care of yourselves,_ Kay retorted. _You hardly have the high ground._

‘Come in here,’ Cassian lured Bodhi away from the dash, toward the cramped quarters in the back of the ship. ‘I’m getting my kit.’

Bodhi gave Kay an amused glance, and Kay shrugged. Cassian didn’t have many ways to show affection, and he suspected Bodhi had fewer ways of accepting it.

Cassian sat Bodhi on the bed, since there was only one human-sized chair. Cassian attempted to roll Bodhi’s sleeve up, but Bodhi shook his head, unzipping his jumpsuit to the waist and slipping his arm free.

When Cassian’s cybernetic eye lingered on Bodhi’s chest, Kay readjusted the odds of how this encounter would end.

Then Cassian became immersed in the task itself, beginning by brushing debris from the crevices of Bodhi’s arm. Kay settled at the end of the bed to observe.

‘What did you _do,_ use an angle grinder in a dust storm?’ Cassian muttered.

‘Weren’t you going to kill me, earlier?’ Bodhi reminded him.

‘A static shock from all this would have done it for me,’ Cassian held up the pick, showing Kay the accumulated dirt.

‘He wouldn’t have killed you,’ Kay said. He declined to comment, aurally or electronically, on the state of Bodhi’s hardware. He wasn’t a hypocrite. ‘Incapacitated, maybe.’

‘Draven would believe you,’ Cassian tipped Bodhi’s wrist to get deeper into the hinge.

‘Draven’s dead,’ Bodhi told him. ‘Kallus is head of Intelligence now.’

Cassian paused. ‘Huh.’

Kay didn’t suppress the flare of grief in Cassian, or the guilty relief that followed it. When Cassian reached the stage of speculating Kallus’ tactics, Kay transmitted the likelihood that they’d be classed as a greater asset than a liability. It was marginal.

‘If I was going to bring you in, I wouldn’t have hailed you,’ Bodhi picked up one of Cassian’s brushes and set to work on his fingers. ‘I’d have laid a much better trap, too.’

Cassian silently passed the cloth he’d been using to wipe his tools. Bodhi rubbed the brush into it with ease: a sign to Kay, more than Cassian, that he knew perfectly well how to do maintenance, and elected not to.

They worked in silence for a while. Cassian filed down some nasty carbon scoring at the base of Bodhi’s thumb, pursing his lips to blow the residue away. Bodhi watched, and the beast inside him was watching too.

‘Why did you keep us a secret?’ Cassian asked, before Kay could advise him not to.

‘Why not?’ Bodhi’s eyes were over-bright, momentarily.

‘To help the Rebels,’ Cassian gave half a shrug, without looking up from the wiring in Bodhi’s palm. ‘You can’t tell me you’re not committed.’

‘You’re not sparing me because you owe me,’ Bodhi addressed Kay with this. ‘You wouldn’t do that.’

‘You loved Cassian,’ Kay said. Bodhi blinked down at the datapad to check what he’d heard. ‘Not many people do.’

Cassian snorted. Bodhi’s expression softened.

‘I loved _you,_ Kay,’ he murmured. ‘Though I’m not sure it’s possible to do one without the other.’

Cassian’s eyebrows quirked. He focused on Bodhi’s hydraulics as he scoured the rims. When he reached Bodhi’s elbow, he hesitated: his own prosthesis attached lower, and Kay’s arm didn’t end in a human shoulder. One of NIM’s tentacles crept out to steady the joint. Bodhi’s jaw tightened fractionally.

‘Let me,’ Kay moved forward to prop Bodhi’s arm. The look on Bodhi’s face suggested he wasn’t particularly at ease with Kay having guessed the problem.

 _Put it away,_ Kay suggested, and Cassian made a quiet hum of surprise. NIM slunk off his back, hiding itself in a compartment under the bunk. Bodhi watched the door for a solid minute after it was gone. When his attention moved back to Kay, holding the arm out so Cassian could drip oil into the creaking joint, the curiosity was palpable.

‘How did this happen?’ Bodhi had a faint smile. Cassian looked up, and Bodhi inclined his head to show how Kay had shifted out of his way without needing to be asked.

 _Do you want to tell him, or should I?_ Cassian bit his lip.

‘I’ll do it,’ Kay said, with Cassian’s mouth.

He liked the way Bodhi stared when he did that.

(You know this part already. The timeline and the locations are excised: they give you nothing that could make it back into a report, if you were ever inclined to write one. You didn’t ask where or when, anyway: you asked _how._ Their voices catch on Cassian’s lips with a fondness that breaks something very fragile in your chest. They’ve never told anyone about it, and you suspect they never will again. It is, from the outside, a love story.)

The time it took was enough for Cassian to oil every knuckle, polishing the haptic receptors until Bodhi would be able to feel an atmospheric drop in his fingertips. As he always did with Kay, he finished the job with a brush of his left hand over Bodhi’s palm. Bodhi’s fingers curled in surprise, trapping Cassian’s hand. Kay found his fingers curling too.

‘Planning to do the leg next?’ Bodhi raised an eyebrow.

Cassian’s expression froze.

 _You forgot about his leg_? Kay realised.

 _‘I forgot about his leg,’_ Cassian muttered.

Bodhi held still for three seconds before bursting into laughter. Cassian flushed so deeply Kay’s fans kicked up.

‘Do you want me to?’ he asked. His eyes traveled down Bodhi’s torso, landing at the jumpsuit rumpling around Bodhi’s waist.

Bodhi rolled his lower lip between his teeth, then he nodded. He guided Cassian’s hand to unzip the jumpsuit the rest of the way, lifting his hips so Cassian could slide it down and finish undressing him. Kay watched, keeping still, as Cassian devoted his attention to his toolkit even as heat roiled inside him. Bodhi let himself be manhandled with a careful kind of grace: the odds of this quiet intimacy vanishing were so high that Kay’s processors hummed. It was Cassian who sent him a wave of tranquility, the same cool appraisal that let him concentrate on the plating of Bodhi’s ankle.

The routine was different: Kay knew this, though Bodhi didn’t. Cassian worked through each step—scouring, plates, electrical, oil, polishing—at different stages along the prosthetic. It was inefficient, but it let Cassian work gradually closer to Bodhi’s thigh without rushing the intimacy of it. Kay observed every shift and shiver in Bodhi, the way tension melted out of him—the way Cassian pretended not to notice, immersed in the complexity of slicking oil over the central joist of Bodhi’s upper leg. Cleaning the hip joint required Cassian to shuffle closer, so he was kneeling between Bodhi’s thighs. His shaky breathing made Bodhi gasp, and when Cassian set aside the cloth he used to catch excess oil, Bodhi’s fingers caught under Cassian’s jaw. Bodhi’s cock was filling, even though—or because, Kay couldn’t fathom—Cassian hadn’t touched his skin. Cassian couldn’t seem to close his mouth when he looked up, eyes heavy-lidded.

They still didn’t speak, but the moment Cassian brushed his lips over Bodhi’s skin, Bodhi reached out and dragged Kay over with his free hand. Bodhi took Kay’s palm and licked the delicate sensors. The surge of input was so strong it made Cassian moan. Kay gripped Cassian’s hair, steering him to take Bodhi’s cock in his mouth. Cassian obeyed, bracing one hand around Bodhi’s shaft and sliding his lips over the head. Bodhi quickly figured out that Cassian would make even more noise with two hands pulling his hair, and he grinned into the fingers of Kay’s other hand.

‘He feels it when I do this, doesn’t he?’ Bodhi murmured, his tongue flicking a wire. Cassian quivered, hollowing his cheeks to suck on Bodhi. Echoes of his arousal sparked through Kay’s systems. His cock ached where it was trapped in his pants, and he whimpered gratefully when Kay curbed the discomfort.

‘I want you to use his mouth,’ Bodhi said.

Kay’s drivers threatened to overheat. Cassian was already initiating the handover, slipping into Kay’s interface to grasp Bodhi’s face and touch everywhere he hadn’t been able to reach.

Kay tasted Bodhi on Cassian’s tongue, felt the thrum of his pulse, the heat as Bodhi tried not to thrust into Cassian’s mouth.

He confessed to Cassian: _I’ve never—_

 _—I’ll show you,_ Cassian smiled, as much as he could, before swallowing Bodhi’s cock. Kay didn’t even have to quell his gag reflex, engulfing Bodhi in warm wet heat. He pulled back long enough to gasp a breath before plunging down again. Most of Cassian’s attention was inside Kay, using Kay’s hand to pull his own hair until Bodhi was fucking Cassian’s mouth— _Kay’s_ mouth.

The moment Kay had enough equilibrium to take the reins from Cassian, he switched to stroke Bodhi with Cassian’s synthetic hand.

 _He likes that,_ Cassian’s laugh crackled in Kay’s vocabulator.

 _I’m aware,_ Kay shared the sensation of Bodhi’s cock throbbing, his hips tensing the same way Cassian’s did on the brink of orgasm.

 _Try this,_ Cassian pumped Bodhi’s shaft, swirling his tongue around the head, letting Kay take over once he had the motion perfected.

Bodhi clung to Kay’s chassis, breath sharper and shallower. Cassian was stroking Bodhi’s face with Kay’s hand, thumb brushing over his lips. Bodhi’s hand tightened in Cassian’s hair, fingers digging around the dataport: Bodhi’s gasp of wonder was stifled on Kay’s fingertips. Bodhi moaned around the digit as he came, quaking, eyes tightly shut. Cassian swallowed, stunned when Kay coaxed his throat open. It saved a mess on Cassian’s synthetic hand, and Cassian’s eyebrows quirked at the convenience as much as the audacity.

Then Kay and Bodhi were pulling him up onto the bunk, Bodhi cradling Cassian’s face to kiss Cassian/Kay. Cassian was breathless, slipping back into his own body as Kay’s processors roared at the surge of sensation.

Bodhi slouched, dark eyes too full of mischief to suggest he’d been sated.

‘You can just _make_ him come, right?’ Bodhi gestured at Kay.

‘I can, _’_ Kay shrugged. Cassian blinked.

Bodhi nodded, and Kay set off the charge that sent Cassian whimpering, boneless, into Bodhi’s lap. Bodhi stroked the wisps of hair around Cassian’s dataport, pulling him into an embrace as he trembled with aftershocks. Cassian nuzzled Bodhi’s cheek for another kiss, and Bodhi gave him one.

‘Cassian?’ Bodhi bumped their noses together.

‘Mm?’ Cassian licked his lips, eyes unfocused. Kay took pity on him, and loaned him enough stimulation to stay awake.

‘How do we trigger an overflow in Kay?’ Bodhi asked.

‘Hands,’ Cassian mumbled, and he sprawled out to watch.

Bodhi took Kay’s hand in both of his, prising the fingers apart and proving he was better with his tongue than an organic had any right to be. Cassian burrowed inside Kay’s matrix, optimising the stimulation and setting off cascades of code wherever Bodhi was lighting up sensors.

Kay’s fans were growling, and he discharged the surge in a flare of his optics, kicking off a soft reboot cycle that made the humans smile at each other. He siphoned some of the afterglow into Cassian, prompting a satisfied purr.

When Kay’s systems were functioning well enough, he gently freed Cassian from his clothes. Bodhi helped by unbuckling his belt, loosening the shirt collar and cuffs until Cassian was comfortable enough to sleep. Kay settled beside the bunk: he should charge, but it could wait. Bodhi propped Kay’s datapad on the shelf before curling up with Cassian in his arms.

 _You’re not going to sleep?_ Kay sent the question directly to the datapad.

Bodhi stared at his optics for a moment, lips forming a ‘no’ too soft to wake Cassian.

Kay nodded. He suspected, in the silence that followed, that Bodhi wasn’t alone with his thoughts.

‘Will he be alright?’ Bodhi mouthed.

Kay let the simulations play out, studying the projected scenarios slowly. _Probably._

Bodhi smiled. ‘You’re a good droid.’

_Easy there. Nobody’s ever accused me of that._

The chuckling almost woke Cassian, who buried his face deeper into Bodhi’s chest. Kay lulled him deeper asleep.

‘You’ve taken care of him,’ Bodhi noted.

 _I’m not sure a measure of loyalty is a measure of goodness,_ Kay said.

Bodhi thought on that, for so long Kay wondered if he’d drifted off. The heartbeat wasn’t steady enough, though.

‘You do right by those you love,’ Bodhi said. ‘That’s close enough.’

Kay inclined his head, and a longer silence fell. He moved to the charging cradle, delaying the power cycle to watch a little longer. Bodhi was studying Cassian’s face, discovering that particular expression he only wore when he was resting.

‘Does it matter?’ Bodhi asked. ‘If we’re different people now?’

Kay thought.

_Of course it matters. I was someone else in the Empire, and so were you. Then I was a Rebel, then I was a rogue. Cassian was organic, and now he’s…_

‘Yours.’

Kay took the word, and stored it somewhere very deep in his code. Cassian might find it someday.

 _It matters,_ he repeated. It wasn’t exactly a reassurance, because he didn’t have one. Bodhi was organic—he was two organics, really—so he asked questions in organic grammar. Kay had enough experience to translate what Bodhi was really asking: _is there enough of me to be loved?_

And Bodhi forgot, as organics tended to, that the answer was welded to his shoulder.


	13. Blue

Slip away, before they can. Crawl through the hatch to your own ship, and patch a mag field over the hole in the galley. Decouple the freighter and put enough distance behind you to jump safely to hyperspace. Let them dream in blue.

You’ll find them again, in the quiet places, when you next get lost.

You’ve never been much good at endings. Better to be left in the middle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for taking a chance on this weird, self-indulgent mess of a fic! Cargo is the direct sequel in this series, and I've written [Cassian/Kay/Bodhi and Cassian/Kay fic here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=13144429&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=robotboy)


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